A court in the Netherlands ruled that, while Shell did have an obligation to cut emissions, the responsibility lay more with government.
Credit...Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times

Shell Wins Appeal in Landmark Climate Case in the Netherlands

A lower court had ordered the company to cut emissions by 45 percent by 2030, but the oil giant argued that a single firm should not be hit with arbitrary pollution-reduction requirements.

by · NY Times

An appeals court in the Netherlands on Tuesday overturned a sweeping climate ruling requiring Shell, Europe’s largest energy company, to reduce carbon emissions by 45 percent by 2030.

The original ruling, issued in 2021 by a district court in The Hague, was seen as groundbreaking and likely to encourage similar challenges globally. It had attracted widespread attention because Shell was at the time one of the largest and most important companies based in the Netherlands. A few months later, Shell moved its headquarters to London.

On Tuesday, Shell praised the appeal verdict. “We are pleased with the court’s decision, which we believe is the right one for the global energy transition, the Netherlands and our company,” the chief executive, Wael Sawan, said.

The ruling comes as some 200 countries meet in Azerbaijan to discuss their plans to address climate change and after the recent win in the U.S. presidential election by Donald J. Trump, a skeptic on climate issues.

Milieudefensie, the Dutch arm of the environmental group Friends of the Earth that brought the original case, had argued that Shell had a duty to accelerate emissions reductions to protect people in the Netherlands and globally.

Shell appealed the initial verdict, saying that putting the onus on a single company to reduce emissions would not reduce demand for oil products and therefore would not be effective.

On Tuesday, the Court of Appeal in The Hague largely rejected Milieudefensie’s arguments, saying that Shell did have “an obligation toward citizens to reduce CO2 emissions,” an important legal point, but that the responsibility lay more with government.

“It is primarily up to the government to ensure the protection of human rights,” the court said in a news release.

The court noted that Shell was already working on a plan to reduce the emissions resulting from its production of oil and natural gas. It also said that if Shell were to stop selling fuels to customers, other companies might well step in to meet the demand. “On balance, no reduction in CO2 emissions would be achieved,” the court added.

Milieudefensie, which was ordered to pay the costs of the proceedings, said that the verdict was “a setback for us, for the climate movement and for millions of people around the world.”

But it remains to be seen how influential the decision, which can be appealed to the Dutch Supreme Court, will be.

Mijke Sinninghe Damsté, a partner at the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in Amsterdam, said that after this verdict, “it will be difficult to bring a broad claim like this,” although the court’s finding that Shell had an obligation to limit emissions was significant.

Other prominent cases against major energy companies continue. In a hearing expected to begin this week in Scotland, Greenpeace is trying to block the development of two large oil fields called Rosebank and Jackdaw in British waters. The Jackdaw project is led by Shell.

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